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Abstract

Research on feminist consciousness and its corresponding benefits has largely been conducted on women. Many feminists find this problematic because it neglects feminist men and the favorable outcomes that have been empirically linked to strong feminist identities for men. In this study, I examined men’s feminist consciousness and explored whether correlations exist between men’s feminist consciousness, their partners’ and peers’ attitudes towards feminism, and the overall health of their long-term monogamous relationships. Several different measures of consciousness were utilized, including “Self-identification” (Gurin, 1980), “Feminist Analysis” (Henderson-King & Stewart, 1997) and “Sensitivity to Sexism” (Henderson-King & Stewart, 1997). Additionally, previously developed measures were used to assess the relationship health of nonfeminist and feminist men. Relationship health was measured on three different components: relationship quality, relationship stability, and relationship equality (Rudman & Phelan, 2007). It was anticipated that men who exhibited higher levels of feminist consciousness would also report higher relationship health than their nonfeminist counterparts. It was also expected that feminist men would report perceiving that their friends and partners held parallel attitudes towards feminism. A survey of undergraduates at a mid-sized university tested these hypotheses and found no correlations between relationship health and feminist consciousness. However, when men self-reported identification as feminist, results revealed that men who identified more strongly as feminist were more likely to identify their partners as feminists and were also more likely to report stronger quality within their relationships than men who identified weakly as feminist. Results confirmed that self-identifying feminist men reported their peers as being likeminded, to the extent that the peers of feminist men were more likely to react disapprovingly to sexism or misogyny and showed a greater acceptance of individuals who adopt feminist identities. Further research should examine the complexity behind male feminist identities to develop new measuring strategies in understanding this discrepancy between self-identification and consciousness, and how men experience feminist consciousness.